Ruthlessly Clear
What true peace actually demands of you, and both the clarity and the steps to get there.
Every girl who’s been taught to be ‘nice’ has been fed different versions of the same script:
People-please (be pleasant).
‘Keep the peace’ (be agreeable).
Just keep your opinion to yourself (don’t cause friction).
If you can’t say anything ‘nice’ don’t say anything at all (be quiet).
That last one literally means ‘don’t speak’, and I’ll explain how they really all do, just keep reading…
I’m no exception to this story, and most likely, neither are you.
‘Nice’ has been drilled into us until we don’t know how to trust our intuition, or know what our truth is, or how to be ourselves. The mask that ‘nice’ is, has buried our truths so deeply that we don’t even know where to begin to find them.
‘Nice’ doubles as ‘good enough’ (satisfactory), instead of great. And who, in all honesty, would choose ‘good enough’ over ‘great’ if they could truly have either one, without question, without uncertainty, beyond all doubt?
In business they say ‘niche-down’ because if you’re talking to everyone then you’re talking to no-one. Which is true. But can we really wonder why it’s so hard to niche down in business when we can’t state our preferences without giving offense and can’t speak about our beliefs without upsetting someone (even though it has nothing to do with them) - how could we possibly get clear enough to niche?
And that truth doesn’t stop being true when you apply it to life instead of business! How can you find ‘your people’ if you’re being ‘nice’ to everyone?
In life, we’ve been taught to ‘be nice’ - and ‘be nice’ means don’t do, say, or even maybe believe anything that might offend anyone, hurt someone’s feelings, or make anybody feel uncomfortable. You literally cannot speak your truth, then, because everyone doesn’t have the same feelings, and everyone isn’t made uncomfortable or offended by the same things. Therefore, your truth will, inevitably, offend someone, make someone uncomfortable, or hurt someone’s feelings.
‘Keep the peace’ is a blatant lie. An impossibility we’ve been trying to achieve at our own expense.
You are only allowed to speak in platitudes, generalizations, and gentle versions of an actual opinion. You are only allowed to stand up for yourself in extreme circumstances (maybe even not then) - anything smaller than extreme and you’re considered petty.
We wonder when we lost ourselves. We can’t understand why no one seems to accept us for who we actually are.
Eventually, we discover that we don’t even know who we are, so how could they know, and if they can’t know then how can they accept? In fact, since we don’t know who we are, we also can’t accept ourselves. And thus the feeling of literally no one accepting us, has, in fact, become our reality.
But it’s a created reality, not a natural one.
I have endless examples from my past of times when I ‘kept the peace’ and it did not bring me a peaceful result. And endless examples of when I basically said ‘fuck that’ and finally got to experience what actual peace felt like.
Women have ‘historically’ (won’t debate who’s version of ‘HIStory’ that is, or when it began) been the ones tasked with ‘keeping the peace’, and yet, since keeping the peace is an actual impossibility, they are also the ones consistently blamed for ‘pettiness’, ‘nitpicking’, and ‘nagging’ when they don’t people-please into silence.
One of my all-time favourite examples to use, simply from the outrageousness of it, is when I labelled my kid’s dresser drawers so that my (then) husband could find things without asking me where they were, and yet he still asked me.
See, somehow, somewhere along the way, I had taken on the hidden labor of child minding and child caring, alone rather than in partnership (let alone with a village) as it should have been.
Maybe I tried to be generous with my energy (often the case) and took on more than my fair share once when he was tired (he was always tired… but so was I), and he took it as an assumption of what the standard ‘should’ be. Maybe it was some sneaky perfectionism on my part (very possible) that made me take it all on and never demand ‘fair shares.’ Maybe, in the process of my having already once been a single parent - and his learning to be a step-parent prior to becoming a biological parent - he simply never learned what his role was, because it had all been my role previously (very likely) and we just maintained the status quo. Maybe he was straight up just an asshat and didn’t try (my assumption, frequently, because of how obvious I thought it ‘should’ be, the fact that he had free will, and how many times I attempted to make it clear how unfair things were as they stood with no change on his part).
No matter what the original ‘cause(s),’ I was doing too much of the mental work, carrying too much of the caring load. It became the default for him to defer to me instead of trying to think for himself. My children followed suit, and suddenly I was the only one in our home with a functional brain, despite no lack of actual IQ in anyone. Because why wouldn’t they defer to me, if I allowed it? It made life so much easier …for them.
It stayed that way for so long, with me ‘biting my tongue’ to ‘keep the peace,’ that anytime I refused… I became the bad guy. He was being lazy, not taking on his fair share, but I was the bad guy for complaining (making him uncomfortable, offending him, hurting his feelings).
And the real kicker is that both sides were true, at least in part. He didn’t take initiative to learn, grow, or balance out the mental and/or the caring loads of our little family unit (whether from lack of interest, lack of understanding, or lack of decency), and I… let him. For so long that he’d basically earned the right to be shocked when I said it was unfair. For so long that it had become so much easier for me to just do it, than for him to try, that it actually did place a disproportionate amount of effort on him if he did try - although that would have faded with time.
And in my case, for so long that one day he asked where a bathing suit was, despite the labels on the dresser drawers. I was absolutely appalled at the lack of effort, lack of caring, and lack of decency that went into that question, consciously or not.
It took a while though, for me to see how I had contributed to that dynamic. And I’m not shouldering all the blame here, either. My entire life I’d been taught to be ‘nice’ and generous and kind. Yet I don’t blame my parents, because it’s also what they were taught.
I googled the word ‘Nice’ because…. that’s just what we do now😂.
The word “nice” is a versatile adjective generally meaning pleasant, agreeable, or satisfactory. It is commonly used to describe kind people, enjoyable experiences, or favorable conditions (e.g., a “nice day”). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
1. Modern Everyday Usage
In daily conversation, “nice” functions as an all-purpose positive descriptor:
Pleasant/Enjoyable: Describes something that gives satisfaction (e.g., “We had a nice dinner” or “Have a nice weekend!”).
Kind/Friendly: Describes amiable, thoughtful, or polite behavior (e.g., “She is a very nice person” or “That was nice of you”).
Intensifier: Often used with “and” to mean “pleasantly” (e.g., “The soup is nice and hot”). [1, 2, 3]
2. Formal and Niche Meanings
In specific or formal contexts, “nice” can carry very different definitions:
Precise/Meticulous: Refers to requiring great accuracy, delicacy, or skill (e.g., “a nice shot” or “nice measurements”).
Subtle: Used for very slight or exact distinctions (e.g., “a nice distinction between lying and stretching the truth”).
Fastidious: Meaning very particular or fussy about details—though this usage is somewhat archaic. [1, 2, 3, 4]
3. Fascinating Etymology
“Nice” has undergone a complete semantic reversal. It traces back to the Latin word nescius (literally “not knowing” or ignorant). By the 13th century, Old French and Middle English adopted it to mean “foolish” or “silly.” Over hundreds of years, it gradually shifted to mean delicate, precise, and eventually polite. [1, 2, 3]
Pleasant, agreeable, satisfactory… none of which equal honest. None of which equal incredible, amazing, wonderful, great, exemplary, fantastic, beautiful, powerful… No. They are seemingly-positive words that in all truth mean generic, bland, and/or fake.
And I’m not here trying to convince you to never use these words; they have their place in our language and conversations. When using them, people aren’t necessarily intending the true meaning. However, take a look at that number three… From ‘ignorant’ to ‘precise’?! From ‘not knowing’ to ‘polite’?! Actual, complete opposites. We’ve been gradually trained over hundreds of years to prefer to be ignorant. To believe that ignorance and generalization equals politeness. Gross.
Pleasant ≠ Wonderful.
Agreeable ≠ Preferred.
Satisfactory ≠ Excellent.
Polite ≠ Honest.
And ‘nice’ ≠ peaceful.
Just as it took hundreds of years for the meaning of the word ‘nice’ to evolve, it also took hundreds of years of systemic oppression for women to transform into the actual mechanism of their own oppression, so that the blame for that oppression could be pointed right back at them… and they’d have no idea how it happened. For too long, women in general didn’t have a voice, weren’t allowed to speak up, could be punished for their truths. Once they fought hard enough, for long enough, with enough sacrifices, to ‘earn’ their rights, there was still a collective belief system that kept them meek, mild, and quiet, more often than not. Every generation of daughters and sons witnessed the behaviors of their mothers and fathers, learned from it, and perpetuated it, at least in part, including our own.
The only way to break that chain is through difficult, often painful, generational work and learning; not just changing the way we teach our children, but changing the way we show our children, changing what we ourselves believe, learning when to be silent and when not to be, learning to hold boundaries without destroying the relationships the boundaries need to be held within, changing which expectations we stand firm on for others, and in general, changing the way the collective thinks about a certain way of being, by fighting for changes to laws, social norms, what’s deemed acceptable and what’s not. Exhausting. And all while still managing that unequal load we accidentally put in place for ourselves/had put in place for us without noticing.
No wonder we’re too busy to notice the inequality for so long. We are kept so distracted from what’s right in front of our noses - by all the noise, the speed of modern living, the stuff we have to deal with daily, the task load, the mental load, and especially by the enormous effort required to meet the expectations we’re drowning under (as a general rule).
And once we notice, objecting to it costs us more than ‘playing nice’ would, making it one of the hardest decisions we’ll ever have to make - not just to object once, but to become the woman who objects, who won’t stand for less, who stands for better conditions for all the women and children before and after her, who refuses to play nice anymore - despite the cost to ourselves.
Becoming that woman is the path to breaking that generational pattern of systemic, load-bearing inequality. Becoming that woman is the path to true, lasting peace.
Peace doesn’t mean people-pleasing your way into non-confrontation. That doesn’t ever bring you peace. Not even temporarily. The temporary lack of confrontation is simply silence and compliance. Not peace.
Instead of peace, being ‘nice’ (non-confrontation) brings you resentment, discomfort, and loss-of-self. It feels a little bit like your soul got splattered with mud. It feels like the word ‘but’… a truth, often already diminished, then softened again by an attempt to placate and to soothe the sharp edges of that truth. In truth, that softening is a lie, even if it’s intended to be kind. Even if it leaves some traces of the truth mixed in.
Lies are never kind. They just ramp up the crash when the truth finally hits.
Actual peace comes when you remove whatever disturbs the feeling, the way of being, and the safety you’re trying to build.
‘Keeping the peace’ doesn’t work. ‘Curating your peace’ does.
But saying “curating your peace” sounds a lot easier than it actually is. Here’s what it actually demanded of me, and the steps you can follow based on my experience, even if it demands a different path from you:
